


Cyanide (The Sirens Miss You)

by f0rt1ss1m0



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Biting, Brief Explicit Language, Developing Relationship, F/F, Gun Violence, Hate to Love, Homelessness, Human!Gems, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Just At One Point So Far Though, Mending Relationship, Mentioned Sexual Content, Non-Consensual Kissing, Nudity, Past Torture, Physical Abuse, Redemption, Rough Kissing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4916098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0rt1ss1m0/pseuds/f0rt1ss1m0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things that just don’t work out at all, like paying the rent, or letting Peridot drive the van, or trying to complete even one mission without punching someone, or trying to be a tolerable human being. And then there are other things that just FEEL like they won’t work out — at least, until someone comes along and shows you that you’ve been doing it wrong the entire time. An ethereal someone with blue hair and tattoos of wings on her back, a someone who despite fifteen years of cryogenic freezing is stronger than you will ever be.</p><p>You will learn to lean on her though you barely know her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Compromise, Or, In Which You Lie About the Conditions and Your Partner Is Moderately Unhappy

**Author's Note:**

> Originally planned to correspond with the daily prompts for #JaspisBomb on Tumblr, however, life spun away with me and I couldn't finish in time. This still has little to no plot and we'll probably figure it out when we get there.

The red digital clock read 2 A.M.

A slender, tattooed hand lay limp amongst the tangle of cheap cotton bedsheets, as still and vulnerable as its owner. The smaller woman was curled up on her side and had just managed to pull the corners of the sheets into her body, with only her dark bare legs and naked back exposed to the sharp shafts of sulfuric light glaring through the basement room’s one window. The tattoos began from between her shoulder blades and extended down her forearms, like wings. But there wasn’t any flying from this little bird. She was sleeping like a baby.

The air was thick with old smoke (from neither of them) and leftover vodka (from both of them). The whitewashed concrete walls didn’t do much to mask the pounding bass of the club just down the hall or the traffic outside, and as Jasper dropped her legs off the side of the low bed and reached for her clothes, the sounds she made were nothing more than background noise. A few more minutes and that stupid trinket and one last conversation with those damn do-gooders and she’d be out of here for good. In all honesty, the one night stand was a little unnecessary and she probably could’ve put this skinny native girl out of the equation with a good dose of rohypnol, but sexual frustration was something that the then-tipsy young woman hadn’t been averse to accepting. “Kinky” was what she called herself. And she’d wanted the same thing: to get out of here.

Too late now, lil’ bird, murmured Jasper as she turned back to the girl and reached across the pillows. A car parked not five feet away from the window, and its yellow light illuminated a small object chained around the girl’s neck. Tarnished silver. The shape of a teardrop. A little bigger than a marble. Jasper had never been good with small objects — just another con of having big bones and thick hands — and it took a couple tries to gather the small object from amidst the mess of sheets without touching or waking its wearer. The sleeping woman’s breath danced light, steady, and warm across Jasper’s hand as she grasped the item, then reached behind the slender dark neck to undo the necklace clasp.

A single thick finger caught in a snarl of dyed-blue hair, and in perfect horror, Jasper watched the young woman’s eyes open.

“I know what you’re doing, you know,” came her high, delicate voice, partly slurred, but at the same time too precise to be anywhere near drunk. Just like that, the soft little hand slipped itself between Jasper’s fingers and stole the silver locket back.

Jasper would never admit to scrambling, or doing anything particularly clumsy in that case, but in her surprise she certainly did rush to stand up again. _How…how…how? What exactly did I say?!_ ran in circles around her mind as she kept wary eyes on the girl. Lithely and without even the slightest of what would be attributed to hangover struggles, the blue-haired woman rolled onto her back and sat up, seemingly unashamed in her nakedness, but her hands still moved quickly as they retied her black halter top around her small chest. “You were going to leave,” she said simply, and her blue jean shorts were yellow in the fractured light. She stood up. “We had a deal, Jasper, and don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about!”

There was literally no way that this woman was anything but clearheaded — this sort of anger wouldn’t show through alcohol and her voice had cleared alarmingly fast. “Look, Leah…”

Her fists clenched. “It’s Lapis. Lapis Lazuli.”

“Yeah, whatever. Lapis, listen. I need that thing, really bad. Hand it over and you never have to see my face again.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal!” Lapis’s unnaturally bright eyes were wide, but intense and a bit broken in a way that made Jasper a little less confident. “You don’t even know what this thing is; you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into!”

“What, do you suddenly _care_ about me or something?” — with bitter sarcasm, mostly useless, mostly as a last resort. Truth was, she actually didn’t know what that thing was; to her knowledge it was just some cutesy necklace from one of those jewelry stores tailored for upper class straight white people, and that if she gave it to the right people then she’d finally have a little cash, a pardoned rap sheet, and her life back. But she didn’t exactly say that because the girl was still staring her down like she’d just killed a man. Jasper turned away from those eyes and tried to find something, anything else to do that didn’t include actually facing the smaller woman, but since there was nothing else in the room she just ended up staring at the blank wall like a jackass. She turned around, again pointlessly. “I don’t have time for this. Just give it or you’ll regret it.”

“That wasn’t. The deal.”

Lapis had moved so fast that even Jasper was taken off guard. She’d dropped to her knees and snatched up something under the bed and now there was a small handgun trained just above Jasper’s nose — a third black eye symmetrical between two equally intense dark ones of a piercing midnight blue. Correct stance, steady arm. Jasper’s eyes slid down the young woman’s slim form and now, only now as she stood alone and in the light, defined the subtle toned muscles hidden among delicate curves.

“You’re one of _them_ , aren’t you,” she said slowly, almost as if she didn’t believe herself. But she did. Nobody else was trained like that, not that instinctively; even the public police got sloppy. She’d had some bad nights before but this certainly had to be some sort of record — irony and cruelty all wrapped into one beautiful and unreasonably priced wine basket. “That’s why you’re here, for _them?!”_

“I — no!” Lapis’s composure slipped briefly. Jasper had, without meaning to, stepped forward and caused Lapis to step back, but when Lapis’s finger tapped the surface of the trigger both of them froze again. “They lied to me. They kept me in a cryo pod for _fifteen years!_ I was never with them and I never will be, just — I just want to go home, okay? You were my last chance!”

Jasper glanced towards the necklace and bit her lower lip in frustration. “That thing’s _my_ last chance, Lazuli. You said that you’d give me what I wanted and we’d be done for.”

“You said that I’d sleep with you and you’d get me out of this godforsaken city,” Lapis snapped. Her voice rose higher, almost maniacally, and she jerked her head. “You said nothing about the necklace and nothing about leaving me before you took me home. We had a deal and you broke it. And now, if you don’t make up for it, you’re going to pay.”

 _Dammit._ It wasn’t like it’d be a challenge to get this girl out with her, but a burden? Yeah. Even still, she needed that silver thing. “I can’t get you out of here without that. Whatever it is. Look, I’ve made a lot of bad deals and this isn’t personal, I just need to take that, return it to the Crystal Douches of the East Coast and they’ll let me off. And you.”

Lapis didn’t seem to like that. Her eyes flicked coolly towards her handgun and then back to Jasper. “It’s a full cartridge.”

“For fuck’s sake, I’m tryin’ to HELP! God, what do I have to do to get anything from you?!” There was only so far Jasper’s patience stretched, and that was it. “Can you give it to me and do you want me to drop you off at hell or not?!”

It was a very weird silence passing between them after that, characterized by the shuddering thumps from the club and the outside whizzing of cars over wet asphalt. A short white smile flickering across the darkness before vanishing. In that time, Lapis lowered the gun and set it very deliberately onto the bedside table, _thump_ ; she reached behind her neck, undid the chain clasp, and let the locket dangle freely from her soft, delicate fingers. After a hesitation she tossed it across the dark space and let it fall into Jasper’s open hands. It felt like an ice cube.

“No, the other direction,” Lapis replied. “Canada.”

* * *

They didn’t stay in the club bedroom, obviously; staying there cost dinero and the bouncers would’ve kicked them out in the most literal sense. “I’ve got a van,” Jasper told Lapis brusquely as they threaded through the throngs of clubbers, her hand on the smaller woman’s shoulder. The pulsing neon and blacklight turned Lapis’s dyed hair vibrant purple; Jasper looked down briefly at her hand and saw that her pale vitiligo was a stark white-blue. Just then someone slapped her ass and she tripped him without even looking back, then crushed his hand under her size 14 combat boots. Lapis flinched when the guy swore, but she kept her eyes forward and shoulders stiff with resolve until they reached the exit.

The temperature had dropped rapidly between the time Jasper had entered the club and now when she exited with Lapis, from a twilight lukewarm to humid chill dressed in dusty rain. Lapis, less clothed than Jasper, obviously felt it too and shivered all the way on the short walk to the van.

It was mostly black and positively ancient, with dents and scratches as dense as the vitiligo patterning Jasper’s own face and arms. Like a large sleeping animal the van lingered, a solid resting mass, in the far back corner of the lot. Okay, Jasper hadn’t exactly gotten explicit legal permission to park it outside random convenience stores overnight, but since only a couple people had actually told her to not, she didn’t bother to move most of the time. Their shadows warped across the uneven asphalt. Lapis kicked a crumpled beer can and it tripped a meter or so, then rolled to a stop. As they approached it again, Jasper took a try at it, and it ricocheted off a streetlight twenty feet away with a sharp ding.

“Just a mattress.” She opened the back doors and gestured offhandedly to the meager furnishings before climbing in. “I’ll be back here though, so unless you’re okay with the front — ”

“It’s not like you can possibly do much more to me,” Lapis responded, but the comeback was weak and she still ended up climbing in. Couldn’t blame her. Windows could be broken and if she was alone in the front seat, there wasn’t much to stop someone else from reaching in and snatching her. Even still…it was cramped enough back here with just Jasper — alone, that was about 80% of the available space now occupied — and Lapis’s options for a place of rest were reduced to either a strip of hard floor or the black garbage bag holding the owner’s laundry. And the floor was coated in Cheeto dust.

“What should I…” Lapis glanced awkwardly around. Even after Jasper closed the doors, it was still chilly in the small space and she rubbed her bare arms. _Hell._ She really was a gorgeous thing and Jasper might have even felt sorry for except…except that she really actually was sorry for her. _Shit shit shit._ Biting her lip, she reached for her cleanest sweatshirt, tossed it to Lapis and made a slice of room on the mattress.

“Just get some sleep.” She spread out the sleeping bag as a blanket, though as it had to cover the surface area of her shoulders, it barely stretched halfway across.

Lapis had put on the sweatshirt and it drowned her, all the way down past her knees. Her beaded sandals had found their place parallel to the wall in the one place that didn’t have Cheeto dust. Jasper pried off her boots from the ankle and settled down. Checked her phone once — two messages from Peridot — and because neither were in caps lock or contained the word “HELP”, she didn’t respond and flicked off the light.

It began to rain again, drumming with white noise on the roof of the van. The mattress shifted subtly as Lapis settled down beside her, still engulfed in the overlarge orange sweatshirt, with her back turned to Jasper. Curled up as tight as she was she looked less like a woman now, and more like a very cold and blue kitten. Her body rose and fell in deep breaths.

“Thank you,” Lapis whispered into the dark, a soothing voice that sounded very much like a lullaby. The dim light filtering into the space was a deep velvety blue, and even though Jasper had known it ever since she’d lost the apartment, for whatever reason it felt a little softer tonight.

“Sorry.”

With the apology said, she closed her eyes.


	2. Speech Happens: Exposition Presented in the Somewhat Cryptic Form of Casual Dialogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pissing myself because apparently AO3 refused to tell me that this draft was saved and caused me to go through existential crisis because I thought all my edits were gone. I am the worst at backing things up.
> 
> Yellow Diamond's first name, Juane, is borrowed from The_Scent_Of_Rain and their awesome human!AU, Yellow Textbooks. Go check them out!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/4401419/chapters/9995192
> 
> For the other Diamonds' names, I just looked up color words in different languages. Blue Diamond's name, Lán Sè, is Mandarin for blue; White Diamond's name, Bianca, is Italian for white. Rose is still just Rose. :)

Waking up, for Lapis, wasn’t so much emerging from slumber as it was being violently plunged into icy reality — with lights too bright and sounds too loud and temperatures way, way too cold, always too cold, to enjoy. But it was better than sleep. Sleep, you didn’t know when you were waking up. The time before sleep was the best, when it was all tranquil flannel blues and deep yellows. It was arms around her, strong arms, and rain drumming on the roof. She would give anything for it.

The back windows of the van had tarps sloppily stapled over them, which by day turned the light of eight in the morning into an intense and ingratiating cobalt not unlike the lights of a certain club. She rubbed her eyes, never mind the giant muscled arm practically bear-hugging her, and glanced over to the arm’s owner. Jasper was apparently a very heavy sleeper, because even though Lapis (with some difficulty) had moved her entire arm in the process of rubbing her own eyes, the large woman hadn’t even stirred. Her impossibly thick blond hair was everywhere, literally; there was even a strand tangled in her diamond nose piercing. But it was surprisingly soft for someone who for heavens knew how long had been living in a van outside a convenience store, and Jasper looked like a totally different and much less angry woman when she was asleep, so Lapis wasn’t exactly complaining. She lay there, in the warmth of the filtered sun and the body of a woman she neither knew nor entirely trusted, and she let her still sleepy mind drift.

It had to be only a few seconds of this peace before somewhere, from a mobile phone, a very annoying beep began to do exactly what beeps do. _EEEP EEEP EEEP. EEEP EEEP EEEP._ Surprisingly enough this alone seemed to be what could arouse Jasper in one try. She sat upright with a speed that flung Lapis almost entirely off the blow-up mattress, as the action of sitting up caused her hair, also, to go up; and since Lapis for whatever reason had been sleeping on top of a good portion of her hair, she went flying like the plates underneath a jerked tablecloth.

“Shit — sorry,” came that gravelly voice again as Lapis, dazed, pushed herself off the Cheeto-covered floor. An automatic response, she assumed just by the speed of the expletive, and as two very strong hands helped her up she met Jasper’s equally surprised brown eyes. She’d never seen eyes like these before — such a light brown that they seemed almost gold in the light, two very small sunsets contrasted against the alternating spotty pale and deep brown of her skin. Then Jasper looked away and the metaphorical spell was broken by the continued _EEEP EEEP EEEP._ “SHUT UP — !” to the flip phone as she half punched it and half swiped it, and “Not you,” to Lapis, and her eyes flicked down to her chest briefly.

She snorted and turned away to her black garbage bag of clothes. “Nice sweater choice.”

Lapis looked down and became suddenly aware of the orange sweatshirt’s flamboyant purple text: _I ATE PATRICK’S MONSTER BURGER, ONLY AT PATRICK’S BURGER BAR._ “ _You_ gave it to me,” she retorted, and attempted to wriggle out of it. It was like trying to take off a wedding dress in the way you’d take off a shirt, and in the end she just ended up stepping out of it.

“Yeah, but it’s still funny.” Jasper’s entire torso and head were inside the garbage bag by now. Her voice was now muffled on top of hoarse and was nearly incomprehensible. “I got somethin’ in here somewhere, I swear. Peri left her backpack here last week and I was gonna sell the stuff in it, but I guess I’m nice. Washed her clothes for her and everything.”

“Who’s Peri?”

“Some kid. I used to work for her mom but she still hangs around me sometimes. Thinks I’m cool, heh…you know, I’m not even gonna ask why you don’t have other clothes.”

“They’re not worth it.” She didn’t even want to think about going back _there._ “You didn’t even ask if I’d come with someone last night.”

“A’ight, did you come with someone?”

“He’s not worth talking about.” Lapis gave Jasper a tired smile as she emerged from the depths, holding a small plastic bag of clothing. She accepted it and turned around — even though they’d both seen each other naked it was different in the daylight. There was a white tank top, some jean shorts, underwear in an interesting shade of safety green and also a tealish-blue flannel shirt, but that was more of Jasper’s size and though it (like much else from Jasper) went down to her knees, it was still passably fashionable and helped hide the awkward tan lines on her shoulders. Yes, even Native Americans tanned; she was dark to begin with so the lines weren’t white, but still were noticeably pale.

She turned when she was done, just as Jasper wriggled into a pair of dirty ripped jeans. She smirked when she saw Lapis looking and, though neither would admit it, if either of them had been lighter then their cheeks would’ve been deep red.

They stopped inside the convenience store to fill up (weren’t _they_ the weird couple, a 6'7" butch and a blue-haired femme, both who probably looked like they hadn’t slept in a month); smiled at the slightly confused cashier as they checked out with their purchases of iced tea, dark coffee, some tacky sunglasses, a package of Twizzlers, some sandwiches, and three random CDs they’d found on that rack of useless things which nobody ever looks at and which is never restocked. Then there was a twenty-minute makeup session on Jasper's part, something Lapis hadn't expected but which she soon learned was a daily routine, including but not limited to insane amounts of spray-in conditioner and meticulous but badass eye makeup (Jasper offered to do Lapis's contours, and seeing how flawless the larger woman's were despite her otherwise-clumsy fingers, Lapis agreed), before hitting the road. It was rush hour. Which, as anyone who’s lived near civilization knows, means that everyone seems to be rushing as slowly as humanly possible.

Jasper drove, Lapis was DJ; the sky was clear and the air was warm, so they left the windows open. It was hours. They blasted the CDs and hated most of them, but one of the cases had a Cranberries album that had apparently been misplaced. “This was my favorite band...I listened to them _all the time_ when I had to work. Pissed Kyanite off like crazy — she hated modern music,” laughed Lapis, pushed her sunglasses up her nose, and relaxed back onto the seat. It _was_ awkward to be singing with someone who’d literally been under her gunpoint last night, but bygones were bygones and she sensed that both of them would need the de-stressing. Jasper had passed her a strange look.

“Wait...exactly _how_ old are you?”

Lapis smirked and dangled a Twizzler above her mouth before catching it in her teeth and letting it hang out like a very long cigarette. It had been the "modern music" that had ticked her off — possibly also the mention of Kyanite, an infamous assassin who'd been a huge reason why the codename Kyanite was off limits to Blue Branch agents. She didn't expect Jasper to know that though. "Older than you, definitely. You’re...what? Thirty?”

The question seemed to splash Jasper with suspicion and Lapis could almost _feel_ her reconsidering her thoughts of Lapis as _‘the younger woman’_. “I’m...thirty-five.”

She snapped the dry end of the Twizzler out of her mouth and chewed what she had, twirling the remainder in her fingers. Traffic was thickening like butter and the acclaimed speed limit of 65 had dropped, according to the dashboard, down to 25. Jasper honked and yelled something out the window about “HEY, MOVE IT, GRANDPA.” It was a distracted yell though, and Lapis could pretty much see the gears in Jasper's head attempting to turn.

“You just love lying, don’t you?” Lapis asked. “I lifted your ID last night when you were renting the room. Happy early birthday, thirty-two-year-old.”

Jasper was silent. After Lapis had finished chewing her licorice she looked over and saw that her sunglasses had slid down her nose. Her golden eyes were unblinking and approximately the size of golf balls.

“Amazing,” Lapis smiled.

It was noon by the time they pulled off the highway, into some suburban neighborhood that just reeked upper-middle class and judgmental. Palms and their wirelike, stringy trunks drooped over the curbs and there were so many fruit trees that Lapis felt like she could cut the air and draw her palm away with grapefruit slice in it. Some white guy was walking his dog along the sidewalk, took one look at the van and scowled at them through the open windows.

They parked — it was at the end of a road, next to nothing but a rocky cliff. About a mile beyond that, Lapis saw sand and water. “You coming in with me?” Jasper asked, as _devil-may-care_ as she always said things.

It normally calmed Lapis to see the sea, but right now her stomach felt like a knot. “I don’t know,” she said, even though she definitely did not want to come. She knew where she was going now and it wasn’t into the ocean where she’d love to be — it was, instead, back to people who knew her in a bad way.

Jasper reached down to her feet, double knotted the strings of her left boot, sat back, and began adjusting the fingerless leather gloves around her hands (the likes of which Lapis hadn't seen much of but which she assumed were there to keep Jasper from hurting herself if she punched something really hard). The duct-tape patched seat scratched and creaked under her weight. “I’m gonna need backup. I don’t know if these guys are gonna keep their promise; they might just take the thing and ice me anyway. And…I’ve got something to say to Rose Quartz that I don’t think’ll go well.”

Lapis turned her head a little too quickly, her mouth already opened in preparation to respond, and was about to regret the action and close her mouth and turn away like nothing was wrong _except_ that Jasper was a surprisingly intuitive woman. “What?” she asked suspiciously, and didn’t accept the rushed “nothing” that Lapis provided as a useless defense. “Really, what?”

“Nothing!” she repeated desperately. What was a lie…what was a good, believable lie… “I just…I just don’t know if you can just walk up to the front porch and ring the doorbell, that’s all…I mean, I broke out. I know the place.”

Jasper seemed to accept this, though her eyes narrowed and thick lips screwed into a frown. Then she nodded, grabbed her big orange gym bag (in which, Lapis assumed, she held a few weapons and That Very Important Locket), and opened the driver’s door. “Great, you can be my guide. Come on then, we’ve got some walking to do. Don’t forget your gun,” she added, just as Lapis’s eyes had flicked towards the weapon she’d placed in the cupholder, and when Jasper had closed the door behind her, Lapis let out an audible groan. That’s not what she’d meant at all but…well, there was nothing she could do now except go.

Not unless she wanted Steven to be seriously screwed.

The path to enemy headquarters was on a path along the rocky cliff ridge, not an easy journey to make in sandals. Lapis didn’t complain; she’d long since learned to never complain about anything, and simply took extra care in where she put her weight. What made the trip nice was the sea breeze, carrying instead of city smog the fresh, invigorating smell of salt and fish and _freedom._ In a few ways it was different than the Atlantic (hotter, thicker, more seaweed and less whale) but soothing nonetheless, and the mere sight of cloudless blue skies on blue seas made her breaths just a little deeper, just a little slower.

She walked behind Jasper at first, both of them in peaceful silence, but after they took a break with lukewarm bottle water and jelly sandwiches from the gym bag (with no peanut butter; apparently Jasper was moderately allergic), they regrouped and walked with Lapis closer to the cliff wall and Jasper closer to the edge. Lapis asked her about current life and Jasper responded monosyllabically; Jasper asked her about current life and Lapis responded with a shrug. The present wasn't something either of them liked apparently. The little handgun in her waistband bruised her hip a little more with every step but she didn’t complain, even when an edge began carving scratches in her raw skin. She stumbled a couple times. Jasper caught her on the second. “So where’s home, exactly?” was a question that came from both parties at least once, and after perhaps the third time on the larger woman’s part, Lapis finally caved.

“British Columbia,” she said. Her heart hurt. “There’s a little reservation village on the furthest north corner. Fifty people — we were all born there, and it’s tradition to die there too. I left two years ago but…I don't even know if it's there anymore. I've been gone too long."

“You said they iced you. How long?”

“A decade and a half.”

“I...okay, look, I understand I failed high school algebra, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

Lapis forced a wry smile. “Me neither. I mean, neither to me. You’ve never been frozen, have you?”

Jasper grimaced. “Partially, once. Training.”

“How long?”

“Seven minutes.”

“Your mind wouldn’t even have time to open That Place. You don’t know.” Lapis shrugged and bent down — there was a little teal wildflower in the rocks and she picked it, spun it in her fingers and watched it get carried away on the wind. It spun for a little bit, then floundered and tumbled over itself. Such a hardy little flower. Probably took all year to grow where there was no dirt, and then she just goes and cuts it off in a few seconds. “Linearly, literally it was fifteen years. But my mind was awake, and it moved... _so_ slowly. It was two years for my brain; that's why I say I left two years ago. And I’m glad for that — I don’t know if I could’ve survived otherwise.”

When she looked back up to Jasper, she saw that underneath the sunglasses, her golden eyes were unblinking and a little bit horrified. Her face, otherwise, was grim. “That sounds…excruciating.”

Lapis nodded but refused to say any more on it. "Who did you train with?" — smoothly changing the subject.

Jasper shrugged. "I was recruited into Rose's branch but Jaune took me in when things started...rotting. She was a good teacher, and I think she saw a potential in me that Rose woulda wasted."

"I know," Lapis replied, and carefully ignored the comment about the agent leader of the Branch Pink, formerly representative of the entire Western Hemisphere (minus Canada and Alaska, but that was politics even her eidetic memory couldn't pull up). She cocked her head a little to the side; her hands had begun to swing a little more openly as she walked. She drew them into herself. "So she had a daughter?"

"What?"

"Peri. You said she's the kid of the woman you worked for. I mean...I assumed you meant Jaune..."

"Yeah, you're right. Adopted the dot five or so years ago; she'd been with Lán Sè before I think, maybe Bianca, I don't remember, but anyway, she didn't...fit the requirements."

"Right." Lapis couldn't ever imagine Jaune Diamond, the fearsome leader of Branch Yellow in the once-thriving Diamond Alliance, consciously giving any amount of time to organically birth a child. Obviously Rose was a different story but her younger sister? No way. Even the thought of adopting a child was odd. "So after Rose defected, Jaune just let you go?"

Jasper smirked down at her. "You really were frozen solid, weren't you?"

"I don't think that has anything to do with anything at all," Lapis replied stoically.

A barking laugh. "Nah, I just like irony. My life changed forever (dramatic sigh) while yours is just the same fucking ice cube as it was when you went in. But yeah, pretty much. When it became clear to the other Diamonds that Rose's agents weren't going to give up America, they just...snapped the lines of every operative left here. Including me. Pissed the U.S. President off his rocker. It was mainly because of double agents and misinformation from both branches or whatever though, there were a ton of those and I think it affected them more than us. Rose's surviving followers wouldn't take 'em in and they just kinda ran wild after that. Actually," she bent her head, padded down her hair with one hand and pulled out a lock that was significantly shorter than most of the rest, "one of 'em in particular took out a patch of my scalp a few years ago."

"That's...ouch," Lapis didn't exactly know what else to say so she just nodded.

Jasper cackled again. "Yeah. She got the worst of it though."

"Wait...but you said that Peri's visited you. Is Jaune with her?"

"Nah, she's doing some sort of exchange student thing. But she's here on official business too, something Jaune won't let her tell me. Something about reviving the East Coast Kindergarten I think."

 _The Kindergarten_. Lapis winced unintentionally at the name — the Kindergartens were the vigorous secret training academies for Diamond recruits and genetic experiments, and what Jaune could possibly want with an abandoned American Kindergarten was something she both wanted to wonder about and avoid all at once. "So Jaune's not in America?"

"From what I gather she's at the Ethiopian base again. Then again though...I got this all off the kid's iPhone and her password is _P3ridotRoxx_ with two X's and leetspeak E's, so don't count me on this."

A smirk tugged at Lapis's lips at the password remark and her suspicions about the Kindergarten felt less heavy now. When she noticed Lapis's smile, Jasper returned the expression and glanced away. She changed the subject: "You were with Branch Blue, right?"

"What gave it away? The hair?"

Jasper shrugged. "Actually, the back tattoo. Wasn't that a thing for you guys?"

Lapis attempted to meet her eyes behind the sunglasses. "Were nose studs the thing for you guys?"

Another laugh, a little softer now. "Kinda."

They continued the journey, now mostly in a wary silence wrapped in something better akin to friendship. Honestly, Lapis didn’t even want to try to describe the feelings that surged between her and the homeless orange-loving ex-agent/assassin; every time she did try it just made her tired. What happened last night wasn’t anything special — it wasn’t love on either of their minds, certainly some lust but not love; in Lapis’s it was necessity of something else, and in Jasper’s it was greed and some vodka (while Lapis had only faked drunkenness and actually didn't swallow a drop, she was more than positive that Jasper hadn’t been able to show that kind of resolve around so much alcohol). But after that, sometime between when they left the bedroom and fell asleep in Jasper’s van, there was something else. Her people, the Tlingit, weren’t traditionally open to grace — an eye for an eye, a lie for a lie. And yet even after attempting to pull the rug out from underneath her once, Jasper had apologized for the mistake and treated her with what was possibly the Jasper-equivalent of kindness. It was perplexing.

And it made every step she took a little harder.

“We’re coming in. I can see the house,” Jasper murmured, ushering Lapis quickly behind a large rock. Lapis didn’t have the heart to tell her that she knew exactly where the house was, had seen it long before her, and that a good deal of her hair was still very visible behind the rock that she’d obviously assumed was an ample hiding place. But instead she nodded dutifully, attempted to soften the tension in her shoulders by breathing slowly — a little quicker inhaling and slowly exhaling. She pulled out her little handgun and checked its cartridge (always loaded).

“Do you have a particular plan, or some sort of fancy entrance?” Mostly joking, but Jasper wasn’t real great with jokes that didn’t include insulting other people and the entire concept of “joke” went over her head.

“No, what'd you think?” Jasper frowned. “Doorbells exist, you know.”


	3. You Mess Up in a Grand Myriad of Ways, and By Now You're Not Even Surprised (Part 1 of How You Got Your Sad Ass in a Meat Locker)

In hindsight, Jasper was right about "just ringing the doorbell".

Also in hindsight, Jasper was wrong.

In hindsight of the hindsight, she was both because she both fixed a problem (returning the necklace) and created a new one (kidnapping a child) in the same five minutes.

As Jasper reflected later, Lapis would come to learn that this was a common occurrence and the only real way to deal with it was by leaving her alone about it to regret by herself. Lapis apparently liked to think that this was a good strategy but only unless someone was going to get hurt because of it — which was this case today, an exception, and the reason Lapis later refused to acknowledge this very poignant fact about Jasper.

Also how they both ended up subzero and packed into a coffin like so many frozen sardines, which was both of their faults.

It began simply — Jasper doing exactly what she’d set her mind to do, which was ring the doorbell. And she rang it. She rang it again too, because five seconds was too long to wait at a door. Honestly, was chivalry dead? During those five seconds Jasper glanced over the house a little more — the last time she'd come here was through textbook kidnapping in a large sack, which wasn't a great time to examine architecture, so this was really all she had — and actually found something aesthetically appealing about the subtle design. To all outside eyes it was just an inexpensive beach home, but if you looked a little closer you saw how the cheap plastic siding was a mask over the solid titanium walls, and how the screen door was literally just a screen door if not for the inconspicuous slat at the base through which, she assumed, a blast door of some type could be activated and pushed up. The windows were bulletproof and had similar blast door slats. Inside was what looked a lot like a very regular kitchen, a little sitting room, a bathroom, and a raised platform with a bed. She'd have liked something more "fortress" and less "vacation" but that _was_ another difference between Jaune and Rose, and another reason why Jasper was infinitely glad to have gotten out when she had.

However, house examination could only keep her satisfied for so long. She slammed her fist into the doorbell and the sound, traveling outside, began tripping over itself. Instead of _ding dong_ it was now more like _ding do ding d ding din din di di dididididididddddddd,_ which amused her. “OKAY I’M COMING JEEZ!” yelled a voice from somewhere inside the house, and out of a door directly across from the front door, a squat Latina girl emerged with a chicken kabob in one chubby hand. She was probably in her late teens and had the weirdest colored hair Jasper had ever seen (which was certainly saying something), as if she’d wanted ten different colors at once but couldn’t decide and just let them all blend together into a bleached whitish-purple. One eye was covered with her bangs, and when it focused in on Jasper and Lapis outside, it went very wide indeed. She dropped her chicken kabob.

“Oh my gods,” she murmured through a mouthful of meat. Then she swallowed and wiped her hands slowly on her jeans. “No way. Are you two. A THING?!”

“What?” both Jasper and Lapis said in unison, which is a very helpful literary device that is used when authors wish to imply that two characters are, in fact, a thing. Since you’re either here for Jaspis or you’re hopelessly lost, I’m pretty sure you can deduce that for your own sorry selves. In any case it didn’t make Jasper any less grumpy than the normal Jasper-grumpiness level of 69 and only served to elevate it (honestly if not from some sort of bar or alley fight, she reflected with some dry humor, she was going to die of hypertension), the rage taking the only conduit of fists slamming against screen doors. “Grr...I don’t have time for this — just LET US IN, KID.”

The girl — Amethyst, Jasper recalled, that was her field name — didn’t seem to have any intention of doing anything along the region of letting them in. She picked up her chicken kabob from the floor and reached into the green fanny pack at her hip. “No way dude — I need to _immortah-lyze the moment._ Say cheese — ”

“Jasper,” warned Lapis, “you’re going to tear that door off its hinges.”

Well, _good_. It satisfied her that Lapis saw her very capable of doing so. It was shaking.

The phone flashed and the pictures were taken. Amethyst flipped through them, grinning like a cheshire cat, and seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that her headquarters was about to lose its front door, laughed. “Hey, G-squad! Come check who’s hooked up; you won’t believe it!”

The door behind Amethyst slid open — Jasper was about to ask herself what was even in there?! but then she remembered that it was an elevator and that eight months ago she was careening from that exact same door, still holding the same bag that had been used to kidnap her and roaring like a really pissed carnivorous feline, and subsequently got her answer; it had to be the actual main entrance and might take her down again to the mysterious land of Whatever The Hell It Was That Pink Branch Did Anyway. But right now all that she saw was a reddish-pink elevator before it closed behind the person stepping out, who also happened to be predominantly reddish-pink in wardrobe choice. She had a black cloud of hair, brown skin, and a black leather jacket very similar to Jasper's own except a good deal cleaner. Though her eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, Jasper watched the woman take one look across the space and through the screen door, one look at what Amethyst held up proudly on her phone, and then one look at the ground as she sighed.

“Pearl,” Garnet called very calmly. Not that she wasn’t always unnervingly calm, though; the last time they had met, Jasper had been tied up and dragged kicking and screaming across the floor and yet _still_ Garnet's mouth never left the signature poker face. _Just like her mother,_ Jasper thought with a twitching lip and a bitter taste in the back of her throat, but almost as soon as the words echoed in her mind she modified them. _The second mother. The egg donor. Test subject 2. The quieter one. Whatever she was._

“Get up here, Pearl,” Garnet called again, a little louder, “there’s something you might want to see.”

The elevator door opened again. A skinny white woman with wispy strawberry blond hair, wearing all white and blue and a little bluetooth in her ear, stepped out looking down at a silver tablet. “What is it, Ga...aaaaaaaaah.” Obviously the _aaaaaaahhh_ was when she noticed Lapis and Jasper standing in the doorway, and when her pale eyes expanded to twice their normal size. She swiped at something on her tablet and said forcefully to her bluetooth, “Steven, are you still at Connie’s? Stay there. There’s trouble at home.”

_Steven?_

“Uh, P, they haven’t even come in the door yet,” Amethyst said exactly what Jasper had been thinking and had actually been planning to yell, and then even though Pearl’s face said _panic_ the teen very matter of factly walked over to the door and opened it. “Sorry, we’ve got no manners here. Get used to it.”

Lapis stepped in with an easy shrug, but Jasper had to duck her head to fit under the door. She grunted, met the frazzled eyes of Pearl, who flinched, and then straightened her back with a careless but powerful stretch. Just from the three Pink agents’ expressions, she knew what they saw; she was proud. A twisted scowl, a monstrous build, glorious wild hair, wolflike eyes. Beastlike. Her steps were heavy on the wooden slats of the floor; she imagined almost enough to splinter them. On another day, she might actually just try.

But today she wanted nothing more than to get this over with. She ground her words through gritted teeth.

“I got your damn necklace, if you were wondering.”

Garnet's upper lip twitched. "Jasper, we talked about this. You need to leave immediately."

“ _Steven-you-listen-to-me-and-stay-at-Connie’s-am-I-clear?!”_ Pearl breathed all in once, slammed her tablet onto the countertop, and pulled out from a cabinet a very large and very shiny sniper rifle. Alarmed, Jasper stepped forward, just as, surprised, Lapis stepped backwards; and if she was going to waste time being philosophical at any point in the day it was right now when Jasper mused that the dual reactions did certainly say something about their respective personalities, but since that seemed a little too nerdy to point out aloud right now, she didn’t. She looked to Pearl, noticed the safety of the rifle was very much off and that the white woman was shaking. _Good._

“G...Garnet, Amethyst,” she whispered, and her eyes were fixed on something just over Jasper’s shoulder, “get Steven out of here.”

That was when the door creaked again, sending a very strange frisson of prickling heat down her neck. She’d only ever felt that twice before; once when she’d first been brought to the American Kindergarten and a second time, not fifteen years ago, the day Jaune Diamond left her here to die. She turned. She braced herself. She stared straight forward and willed herself to lock down warm brown eyes — but met only empty air.

She looked down.

And it was a boy. It was a _boy_ standing there, gaping back at her, terribly, terribly familiar. Impossibly thick black curls, tinted pink at the tips of some; a pink round face; an unwavering loyalty and curiosity in his warm brown eyes that were uncannily like _hers_. He looked at Jasper first, in fear, then…

“Lapis!” the boy cried, dropping his backpack. Before anyone could act he broke into a run towards the blue-haired woman, two chubby arms clamped around her thin waist, and she looked up just in time to meet Jasper’s eyes.

“What...the _fuck_ is that, Lazuli?” she spat.

She hadn't been old enough to remember exactly when it had first started, but sometime around her fifth year of training (how long ago was that? Twenty years? Oh god she was getting old), disputes became battles in the strained but otherwise well-meaning Diamond Alliance. Originally it had been about genetic experiments, the concept of taking the best traits from the best agents in their fields and synthetically breeding the Perfect Girl, a fusion agent born and raised to be the best; and at first, nobody directly opposed the idea. But when Jaune Diamond had stepped up to be the leader in the project, her half-sister Rose objected and cut the Pink Branch from the Diamond Authority altogether. Jasper vaguely remembered hearing something about a mutiny, something Jaune did or said that had made Rose worried for the stability of the system or something, but a short time later she had transferred to Yellow Branch and she'd never been able to inquire further into it. In any case, Rose had taken most of the technology and scientists with her and had begun indoctrinating all of Pink Branch as possible, and a year before Jasper's graduation from the South African Kindergarten began a silent World War III.

It was because of this that the Diamond Authority fell to pieces and was rejected by the governments they had once upheld, because of this that Jasper stood as disgraced as she was here today. She used to be a leader, a captain, an idol — best in her year and fourth in the entire branch. And yet what was she now? A homeless, jobless, penniless _thug_ , being ordered around and manipulated by the same people who had put her here? The irony (if that was even what it was; it wasn't like she'd know because she was a spy and not an English major) sickened her.

It was all because of this little fat kid, a pet project by the looks of him, not even an agent — it was a _thing_ that had dragged her down to what she was now.

When Jasper spoke, the boy loosened his hug around Lapis — who seemed equally panicked, and for good reason. Jasper bared her teeth and they both flinched. Gone was whatever camaraderie she'd felt for the former Blue Branch agent not fifteen minutes ago; in its place was betrayal on both sides. The little slut had _known_. This was a complication that might cost them both their lives — if this kid was meant to be a secret of Rose's, then his protectors might to anything to make sure that he stayed that way — this was a game changer and Lazuli hadn't even thought to warn her about it.

Across the room the Pearl agent snapped something about watching her language around children, but Jasper didn't care. Rose's pet was a child, that was for sure, but he was a child who existed because of mutiny.

“He’s one of _hers_ ,” Jasper took a step towards Lapis, not Steven; their eyes never broke contact. It almost sickened her to think of the laughter of last night. The vodka-laced kisses. The light, deceitful breath down her neck. “He was with _you?!”_

Lapis's eyes were wide and she shook her head, the lie all there. Jasper _had_ been an interrogator once, not necessarily a good one, but anyone could tell that this woman was a traitor. “He’s just a civilian! He — he’s not one of them!"

Her blue eyes flicked towards the three Pink Branch agents standing on the other side of the room, all of whom looked perfectly ready to pound both Jasper and Lapis into the ground. Pearl's thin finger rested on the trigger and a little red dot hovered right over Jasper's left breast. Amethyst had pulled something out of her fanny pack that looked awfully like an explosive; Garnet had only her fists but she also had, and this Jasper knew particularly well, an unexpected amount of strength in her lean arms and shapely upper body and two circular microweapons strapped to her palms.

And yet, despite the fact that there were three armed agents and one currently unarmed Jasper, Lapis looked more scared of _her_ than any of the others. "Don't hurt him..."

“I know what an illegal genetic experiment looks like,” Jasper snarled, because did Lapis think she was _stupid?_ — “and I know what a lie is. You knew — "

Lapis scrambled for words but her eyes never flinched; a few feet away Steven scrambled for safe ground behind the three frozen agents. Jasper debated grabbing him, but the little laser on her chest ended the consideration. “It wasn’t relevant to the mission! I didn’t think you cared what Rose was doing; I just thought you were going to drop off the necklace and then —

Lapis’s words tripped just as soon as Jasper grinned. She couldn't help it when she grinned; it always began with a twisted, powerful pull in her chest and surged out as what was, a dear late friend once described, a predator's smile. Carnivorous. “Change of plans,” and Jasper turned the murderous expression towards the three agents and the trembling boy who had taken shelter behind them. “Jaune Diamond needs to see this. Forget about the deal.”

“There _was_ no deal,” Garnet spat across the distance, her fists closed and borderline clenched. A little tighter and her microweapons would activate from the pressure, and once those were out, the fight would officially begin. “We never agreed. You’re too dangerous to just be let off the hook, Jasper. The mere fact that you have _that_ proves it all.”

She pointed at the silver necklace still swinging wildly from Jasper’s closed fist and winking devilishly in the stark afternoon light. Ironic, because for something that was talked of like a prisoner with valuable intelligence, it was awful useless. By this point she couldn't care less about who held it.

“This is a waste of my time,” Jasper snapped back. “I don’t even know what the hell it does; if anyone would, it’s this brat.”

She jabbed her finger at Lapis’s chest and made her wince; the tip of Jasper's lacquered red fingernail just barely scraped down the exposed skin. Their eyes bored into one another's, just long enough for Jasper to make sure that Lapis was scared enough before Jasper turned back to the three agents and the experiment. If it came down to a hand-to-hand fight here, she wanted to eliminate any chance that Lapis would even think to face her, obviously the stronger operative, in combat. One less problem to deal with.

She looked back at the Pink Branch agents. "Here's a new deal, since the last one didn't make it through your thick skulls," she grinned and stuck out the necklace. "I give you this thing, and in return, you clear my records _and_ give me" — the dark red claw was now on the experiment; he was crying — "that. Oh, I won't hurt him. He's my ticket back home. But...that's just the price you pay for betraying your fucking superiors."

"Can I blow her up?" asked Amethyst, which only served to make Jasper laugh. It was a feral, guttural laugh; unhinged. Unstable and she knew it.

"Jasper — " Lapis's bell-like voice wisped through the tense air, too close, and even without looking Jasper lashed out in defense. There was a glimpse of blue. Of an open mouth. A flinch. And the back of her hand hit something very soft and stinging, something which she knew that she would regret, something that hit her back without even touching her. Lapis's head snapped back and her skinny body flew back like a bird plucked out of the air, tripped over her own sandaled feet, and hit the wall with a painful thud.

Even before she said them the words had seemingly already left Jasper's mouth, and she could not make herself stop. _"STAY OUT OF THIS!"_

Lapis landed on her knees and forearms, her head jerking down and Jasper’s flannel shirt slipping off her left shoulder. Involuntarily the larger woman tripped back. Something in that moment hurt very much, whether it be the gasp from Pearl, the choked cry from the experiment kid, or the pained, keening moan that slipped from Lapis’s delicate dark lips. It was a red haze when the blue-haired agent pushed herself to her knees and Jasper saw a pinkish scrape lined with pearly blood; a deep serrated gash across her cheek.

And Jasper hated them. They — the scratches, the experiment, the Pink Branch agents, Lapis — made her feel uncomfortably weak, and she hated them.

She pulled herself away from the fallen woman, too fast possibly, but she _had_ to get out of here. God, she wished she’d planned for a quick getaway; conversations with anyone remotely in the territory of her bad side regardless of topic always turned out to need them. She still felt weak, cornered, like what she imagined an injured rabbit might feel like inside the wolves’ den.

There was only so much she could do now — she had to get that boy. "You — ”

That was when Garnet moved, lunging forward with all the power of a lioness onto her prey. Just as she pressed her fingers tighter together (a slow motion moment), the two devices on her palms sprang to life and unfolded across the surface of both hands, linking gears and plates of titanium together seemingly out of thin air. In the second it took for Garnet to draw her arm back in a punch, two large gauntlets had assembled themselves around her fists and were hurtling at high speed towards Jasper’s face.

A fight. This was something she could dominate _and_ not screw up. Even better, the Pearl had pulled back her stupid gun to avoid hitting her comrade, leaving both of them free to move. Despite the onslaught of doubt and what she believed was guilt, Jasper found a grin pulling taut at her lips. “Good.”

Her microweapon was new, much tougher and a half second faster than Garnet’s versions, but that was only because Peri had stolen it for her and done some personal work to fit Jasper’s specific needs. It fit snugly behind her left ear, was calibrated by the microchip-crossed-nose piercing, and could be activated without hands. Jasper prided herself for not having a single weak muscle in her body and then some — the ability to move your ears was a recessive trait and she used it to a great degree, meaning, to activate her microweapon. (That’s where the Turbo Nerd’s tailoring had been particularly useful). What made it better was how her hair always hid her ear, so when she flicked it back and the titanium helmet unfolded around her head, it was as if it were cued by telepathy — or maybe some of those really nice new neuroscanners the dot was blabbing on about the other day.

Metal fist met metal helm.

The resulting sound was a tremendous, shuddering _BANG_ that, even though the inside of the helmet was padded with shock-absorbent material, sent a nearly unbearable shudder down Jasper’s spine and set her teeth on edge. The shock threw both her and Garnet off guard and she stumbled back, her left shoulder grazing the wall but otherwise unharmed. Her blood was too hot, too fast to let her feel pain right now. A berserker’s rage. She stood straight, reached into her bag, and once she got what she needed, dropped the entire thing without a care. (A small missile rolled out of the open top but she pretended she hadn’t noticed.)

Garnet, even though she’d been thrown nearly fifteen feet back towards the remaining two agents and the experiment, had landed on her feet and recovered just as quickly. “Steven, run!” she shouted before leaping at Jasper again, right into range.

She barely had to lift the gun. A _pop_ and a high whistle and a tiny dart with an orange flag found its place on Garnet’s right thigh — and just like that, her journey was over. The agent had just enough strength to skid to a stop and onto her feet, almost nose-to-nose with Jasper, with her mirrored sunglasses slipping down her nose to reveal two very wide and very shocked eyes, heterochromatic blue and brown. But even as Jasper watched, even as Garnet’s muscles relaxed and she began to fall backwards, the shock drained from her eyes and into simple, hollow blankness. The boy — _Steven —_ was the only other one to meet these eyes as the tall agent fell. Pearl let out a horrified cry.

Jasper looked out at the remaining three...all of them, weak. Pearl wasn’t even holding her gun so much as hugging it; Amethyst just stood there, breathing hard; and the kid, closest to her, was whimpering. How _good_ it felt to be feared again — Jasper would look back on the event and she would realize that the world was bathed in red at the time, that her body seemed to move out of its own volition, and that even though the remaining agents _should_ have been better than her; after all, they _had_ been the winners; even still, _she_ had lived the past fifteen years still in combat while these soft defective sluts had lain around doing nothing. The fight was fresher in her.

“I was there, you know,” she told the experiment, and it made her feel so strong again to see him wet-eyed and quivering like this. "At the first war for this garbage Branch. I fought against your Diamond's armies. I respected her tactics. But this, you — "

She felt that tug again, that yearning for a position of power, and like a whip her arm snapped out and clawed at the boy’s collar. He was light for his size, and even if he hadn’t been, she probably would have dragged him off the ground anyway just for the heck of it. He kicked and struggled and the yearning burned in satisfaction. She spat into his face, and added saliva to the leaking tears on his cheeks. “This is sick.”

Across the room, Pearl snapped back into stance and lifted her rifle. “Unhand him!” she screamed, but just from the way her hands quivered Jasper knew the white woman was all bark and no bite. She laughed at the two agents, and then at the child. He was strangely still.

“I don’t get what Rose is planning. But _look at you._ Your base is vulnerable. Your protectors are ruined. You have — ”

Whatever she was going to say was lost, both literally and with the fact that she was never going to say the word. The boy had pushed back the sleeve of his pink sweatshirt but Jasper hadn’t been paying attention, which she instantly regretted as soon as she saw what was there — a chillingly familiar brace strapped around his chubby forearm, and a second later, a dazzling silver and pink shield. _Rose’s._ It blew up into existence right between her and the boy and startled her so much that she actually dropped him. (Also with the fact that when he lifted his arm it whacked her in the nose, which really hurt.)

Jasper stumbled back and caught herself after a few feet, holding her nose — she must have been _really_ surprised because her helmet had put itself away, which wasn’t supposed to happen. Rose had...given up her shield? To _this kid?_ “What…”

But once again, she was never to finish.

Someone tapped her shoulder just then, which was such an unexpected action that again she started — only to find herself looking in the enraged eyes of Garnet.

“Don’t ever touch my Steven again, bitch,” she said very calmly, and just like that Jasper found a fifty-pound gauntlet making love with her jaw.

She hit the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gdg this turned out way too long, I'm not happy with the ending, AND it wasn't even supposed to stop here. Guess the next chapter is another Jasper POV.
> 
> You can totally see my old middle-school action movie obsession coming out lmao because this is like 1% romance 30% copypasted from the Return transcript and 69% too much description of cool stuff. Sorry about all this; I PROMISE we'll get to more romancey and character development stuff soon enough. Soon enough meaning after Nanowrimo though; I HAVE to do Nano this year otherwise I'm going to scream.
> 
> i know I'll shush now.


	4. Kisses in the Dark Next to a Device That May or May Not Cause Your Present Demise (Part 2 of How You Got Your Sad Ass in a Meat Locker)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DESPITE NANOWRIMO I SOMEHOW?? IDK MAN

Jasper knew for a fact that unconsciousness never worked like it did in PG-13 movies, and for whatever reason as she was dragged through pristine white hallways this was the one thought that pulsated through her mind. Knocking someone upside the head did little to nothing in ways of keeping them quiet for any amount of time, a couple minutes at most. Any harder of a hit and there was risk that you might not ever wake up again.

She surveyed her status as she swam back into the land of the living, swimming upside down, but back nonetheless. It was cruelly familiar; the pressure around her legs and scraping on her back, the stifling duct tape around her mouth, ankles, and wrists. Garnet was dragging her across the ground, an impressive feat. Her hair and bare arms trailed like the train of a dress behind her; they’d taken her leather jacket and combat boots and, as a significant lack of appearing helmet told her when she twitched her ear, also her microweapon.

“We can just shove her in here for now,” came Amethyst’s drawling voice, and also a headache. The second one wasn’t much of a surprise though. Jasper cracked open one eye and more headache happened so she closed it again, but in that time where she could see she managed to make out the shapes of a predominantly steel corridor, perhaps the same dungeons as she’d been brought to last time when she’d first proposed The Deal. A door swung open with a whoosh, Garnet hauled Jasper across a cold raised strip of metal which a string of her hair got caught on and pinched her scalp, the vice like grip released her ankles and the door shut again, relieving her entirely of the aching light. Unfortunately that meant that she couldn't see anything, and could barely even tell which way was up.

They hadn't taped her hands behind her back probably out of courtesy more than anything (being dragged on her back like that would be just cruel, and as Garnet and Amethyst were larger-breasted women too they must have vetoed pulling her on her stomach) which was both more comfortable and convenient for her. She used them to push herself into a sitting position and stretched them into the abysmal darkness, hitting a steel grate before she'd even extended them all the way. Similarly, her toes brushed a icy net of metal. She would have stood up if not for the suspicion that that damned war machine had given her a concussion and that quickly jumping would not be the best career move. So instead, Jasper focused on breathing. In through the nose, out through the nose. In. Out. Her blood boiled.

Once she had calmed down, a task that took perhaps five full minutes, she lifted her bound hands clumsily up to her mouth and with her clawlike fingernails picked her gag off. With her mouth free she gnawed at the hand bindings until they fell off and finally freed her feet, leaving her to stretch her already-cramping muscles to her heart's content. Not that it'd do much good. The door, she noted as she ran her hands up from the bottom, was a grade-A Keep Ya Prisoners Stationary model. Okay, that wasn't actually what the doors were called, but whatever. It was handleless on her side, the bottom was specially sealed, and the hinges were most likely on the other side along with the handle. On the ceiling above her and two feet to the left (she estimated from the damp, chilly wind sweeping down her t-shirt) there was a vent, but she doubted that it was large enough to admit a person of any size. Pink Branch was certainly dense but they weren't that stupid.

There wasn't much she could do, not in this state, not now. She'd have to wait until they came to feed her and then she might be able to get out by force — but that all depended on if they'd feed her at all. Maybe they'd just leave her to dehydrate. It wasn't the most honorable death, but...well, it was better than slowly going insane from solitude.

Which was also a possibility.

Already the silence had begun to invade her mind, picking at every seam. Resurfacing memories. Last time this had happened, this kind of imprisonment, she'd been thirteen. They started kids off younger back then and they'd had her on missions then too — backup for an undercover girl in a slave market, intended to be the heroine to save the damsel if need be but somehow ending as the damsel herself. They'd thrown her in a box meant for dead animals, judging just by the smell, and after a few hours their leading man came in while he thought she was asleep and tried to take advantage of her.

He was her first on-field kill — she snapped his spine as soon as he so much as grabbed her.

The beration post-mission, however, was what Jasper remembered most clearly. Jaune Diamond had not been happy in the least. And it wasn't so much beration as it was dismissal, just a cold glance and a wave of her hand and a "Four more years." Jasper had been heartbroken and destroyed at least two gyms, but as she committed herself back to training, both her will and her body grew stronger than any other girl's. Once again she rocketed to the top of the class and to the forefront of Jaune's view. She'd been the first choice for an operative leader against Pink Branch and the only one to never give in, holding her blessed leader's name to her heart throughout all she did. At the young age of eighteen, Jasper stood before Jaune, Lán Sè, and Bianca Diamond with her head bowed, clutching a medal to her chest as hundreds of lesser agents watched and applauded in admiration. Jasper 11352, Operative General.

Barely three months later, she found herself kneeling on a rocky New England beach, wounded, alone, and screaming at the stormy skies.

Jaune had cut her off. Abandoned her. It was as if she'd died in combat — nobody came back for a dead woman's body and nobody came for Jasper. She'd just watched every one of her comrades lose their lives and almost lost her own had it not been for a passing train at just the right time, and escaped with only severe dehydration and twelve deep wounds across her muscled back. They had an old Carnelian who still used the scourges and whose name Jasper cursed with every breath she took in, because the mere action of inhaling dragged her ribboned skin a little tighter. But she'd done it. She'd made it out and killed every one of those Rose Branch bastards, set fire to their outpost, and destroyed every last piece of evidence that might even whisper as to why they had come here. She had done everything by the book and then some and all in the name of Jaune.

And yet not two hours later she listened to the impassive electronic words via public telephone: "Contact Line Jasper 11352 is no longer in commission. Contact Line Jasper 11352 is no longer in commission." over and over and over and over and fucking over again until Jasper pulled the phone off its stand, smashed it against the wall of the booth, and tore away running.

They had decommissioned her. Left her for dead, the reasons for which she would only come to learn years later from a hysterical Citrine who tried slitting her throat five minutes afterward. But at the time, there had been nothing. Not a call, not a messenger, no messages of any kind explaining why. Jasper had been furious but never begrudging, not against Jaune, never. She’d never think a bad thought against Jaune. She raked her mind for every possible excuse as to why Jaune had done such a thing — maybe her head specifically was on a wanted list somewhere and Jaune “decommissioned” her just to throw enemy agents or bounty hunters off her track, maybe it was a mistake and they’d meant to decommission another agent instead, maybe they received word that she was dead before she escaped, maybe HQ had been hijacked and this was the work of a hacker who just wanted to turn Jaune’s own branch agents against her. Any excuse was better than accepting the reality — that they were losing the war and that there was no more room left for an unstable soldier who had not only failed her original mission, but also maimed herself beyond hope of a quick recovery.

She couldn’t accept that. She wouldn’t.

Later on from that mad Citrine, Jasper was informed that the decommissioning was done on a mass scale and was largely due to corruption in American-assigned agents, and the fact that to risk time and money to pick them up again was something the Diamond Alliance as a whole could no longer afford to invest in. By this point she had more or less adapted to the homeless life and had even picked up a temporary job as a personal trainer for overweight college guys, so her anger had subsided and the excuse was enough to rest at peace with.

Jaune did not mean to leave her here, alone, desperate, stranded. She had had no choice.

“No choice,” Jasper found herself whispering, and dully wondered if the solitary confinement was beginning to do its work already. Or more likely it was just the effects of that smack upside her head, making her repeat the her own thoughts to herself. Either way, she was probably fated to deal with it until an escape plan came to her, and she lowered herself to the floor simply out of the exhaustion that came with the thought. She hated what was left of Pink Branch very much now — the cute little beach house, the boy, the mere thought of the women who created Garnet. It was a family, if that was using the word right? A group of operatives who did not disband? Who — damn the L word, why was she even thinking it — loved each other, and who would do anything to protect a member?

It was a weak tactical maneuver if anything, the concept of agents ever forming familial or friendly attachments to each other. If one member was captured then the others would throw themselves in danger for them. Attachment, ironically, made for weak links. It was why Jasper answered to the name Jasper, not because it was personal, but because it was her designation, a post, a job. It was why Pink Branch fell like it did.

And it was why she felt very, disgustingly sick to her stomach at the mere thought of blue.

Whether purposefully or just out of habit, when Jasper had lain down, she had moved her head on the side so as to press her ear against the solid cold floor. So when the deep, striking shudder ran through the very foundations of whatever bunker this was, Jasper’s ears were the first to know. The sound was familiar: it was that large missile that had fallen out of her bag before, and it shook her room so hard she swear her body left the ground.

Somewhere far above an alarm began to sound, the same two notes echoing through the ventilation system. Whatever. Probably that Amethyst had set it off or something and destroyed her own headquarters. Undoubtedly, however, someone might come to check on her cell to see if the disturbance had done anything unpleasant, so Jasper kept her guard up and pushed herself to her feet.

Not long afterwards, perhaps two seconds later, the door opened.

Before she could fully assess the situation, Jasper’s enormous hand had shot out, her fingers had snapped around the opener’s thin wrist, her other hand had slipped outside the door to hold it open and she had swung her body around so as to propel the other woman into the cell and propel herself out into the blinding light. And she almost shut the door on her too, except that a half-second was long enough for Jasper’s eyes to pass over the woman’s face and recognize her.

“You — ”

Lapis Lazuli yanked back with a start, despite the vicelike grip on her wrist and being in such a tiny cell. Her flannel shirt — Jasper’s flannel shirt, was now singed in addition to ripped, and in the moment Jasper took back everything she presumed about it being Amethyst who set off the explosive. Everything about the young woman said that she wanted to run, and now that in a second Jasper had swung around and taken that option away from her, she seemed very scared indeed.

But Lapis knew this place. She wanted to run, and she’d been able to find Jasper.

Thundering footsteps vibrated overhead, shaking the fluorescent lights, and more out of panic than anything Jasper pulled Lapis back out of the cell. A look right, a look left — a safety stairwell. Could be their savior or their cage. With all other options either gone or unpleasant, Jasper plowed forward with Lapis still in tow and flung both of their bodies through the stairwell door.

Thankfully there weren’t three pissed-off Pink agents thundering down the stairs, so Jasper took the opportunity to take down Lapis. “C’mere, brat,” she snapped, and coincidentally there was a nice concrete wall to pin the smaller woman against, a perfect opportunity.

Lapis held her head back and struggled against Jasper’s grip, but she’d pinned her by the shoulders and there was no way out of this one. Her smooth, dark neck was turned just enough for Jasper to see the tendrils of ink on the back of it. Some of the markings were words in a language she couldn’t understand. They mocked her.

“Let me go! I didn’t want this!” Lapis grunted, even going so far as to spit blindly in the general direction of Jasper. It hit her left cheek but she didn’t wipe it off; she couldn’t care less.

“Lapis, listen — listen!” Lapis did not act as if she wanted to listen. Jasper shook her.

“Lapis...please.”

Lapis stopped struggling, though her breath still came quickly.

It was the end of the world — Jasper found herself begging. Taking a deep breath, she loosened her grip on Lapis and stepped back, her hands hanging limply and unclenched at her sides, and said it again. There wasn’t much time until the Pink agents figured out where they’d gone, or checked a camera, or something. “Please. You’re my only chance; you escaped this hellhole once and you were going to do it again. Just get me out of here...please.”

A loud boom echoed through the stairwell just then, very, very close to where they were now, and Lapis tensed. A quick glance out the safety door and then a pained one towards Jasper. “Come on,” she blurted, and suddenly Jasper found a hand grasping her wrist and pulling her down rickety metal stairs much the same as she’d done to Lapis not five seconds ago. She wrested it free without much effort (every agent worth her weight in gold knew that running while holding hands was a definite way to slow both members down no matter how fast of runners they were).

They tread quickly but lightly at first, but after three or four stories, Lapis hopped onto the railing and began sliding her way down every single one. To keep up, Jasper was forced to take the entire thing in two tremendous leaps, making the safety staircase shudder and creak alarmingly. It hurt her bare feet. She missed her combat boots. The whitish blue lights had long since flicked off and been replaced by a strobing angry red, probably a prisoner jailbreak warning. Jasper had been surprised that none of the Pink Branch agents had slipped onto this staircase yet (she had been checking up and over her shoulder with every flight they descended) and was actually beginning to grow suspicious. Lapis herself had only a small handgun, but certain agents could do alarming things with even the smallest of weapons and it wouldn’t matter if it was just a nudge towards the three Pink agents anyway. If Lapis intended to trick her…

Oh, what did it matter? She was dead anyway. Might as well go down fighting.

Lapis stopped just then, right by a wall and door labeled -26B. Without even hesitating she shoved it open and sprinted out (surprisingly fast for bare feet), skidding at the end of the pristine white hallway to motion emphatically. “This way!” she called, and waited until a slightly-out-of-breath Jasper had caught up to her.

They moved to the left down a corridor, then left down another corridor, then left down another corridor until, at the fourth door that went to the left, Jasper grabbed Lapis’s arm and told her that it probably took them back in a circle and what the hell? But then Lapis shook her head and opened the door anyway, ushering Jasper in fast enough that she actually wondered if the Pink agents had caught up with them.

When Lapis closed the door behind them, the room was noticeably dark. Not lightless; there were still these creepy, dim teal lights ran down the floor, and strange scarlet lights blinked on shadowy shapes standing at attention there. A low thrum, like a bass string whose note never faded, filled the silence. “What is this place?” Jasper asked, and even though nobody had said for her to only whisper, it only felt appropriate. There was something that looked like a pentagonal control panel in the center of the room, but it was mostly dark besides menacing red buttons and she didn’t dare touch it.

It was suspiciously chilly here, and when a small hand rested on her arm, Jasper tensed up and whirled around in surprise. Lapis’s black eyes met hers, and in the uncertain light, only half of her face was illuminated. The scratch down her cheek was a cold, jagged blue; the blood leaking from it looked more like oil.

“They won’t look for us here,” she whispered. Her voice was strangely syrupy, like last night when there was a little too much vodka involved, and though Jasper knew now she’d just been faking it back then, it lulled like a song. And also like a song, Lapis’s willowy body began to sway, gradually shifting closer to Jasper until they were facing each other, mirroring the other’s movements. It was with great caution that she lifted her own hand and slipped it behind the other woman’s back, a little pain as she touched a charred bit of her shirt that was, in fact, still hot; but nevertheless she actually felt no intention to repeat the ugly backhanded slap of Not Too Long Ago and even laughed at how stupid she’d been.

“That was mine,” she said stupidly, and drew her thumb across Lapis’s cheek to wipe off the blood.

She didn’t even wince. “I don’t care.”

Lapis’s body still swayed, drawing ever closer to Jasper, and her other hand tapped idly across her side and up her back. Those delicate fingers drummed one scar in particular, the deepest one, and despite the hard scar tissue that had filled it in long ago Jasper still hissed from the resurfaced pain. Lapis looked at her curiously, then drew her hands away and instead looped them around Jasper’s shoulders. The movement was perplexingly fearless — not running, but not resisting either. Simply shifting, moving, mirroring. It was mesmerizing, and Jasper found herself unable to think why were they here, why was Lapis doing this, and before she could even wonder why she wasn’t wondering, Lapis had tilted her head up, closed her eyes and just so silently invited her in.

It was no time and place for a kiss, but the request was too good to pass up. The factors of the environment, she later reflected, were the cause of most actions taking place here — extreme risk, high tension, and a mutual confusion borne from the fact that they had both really enjoyed their one-night stand. And then Lapis was so pretty, so delicate, and so much of Jasper just wanted to tear her apart that a kiss was the closest thing she could get right now. Of course, they could always go further, and they had, but that took time. It took foreplay and teasing and time. A kiss...well, they could spare a minute or so for a kiss.

The contact was harsh and led largely by Jasper at first, leaving nothing untouched. It was just lips first, pressing tightly together between gasps of hot breath, and then Lapis moved her mouth and clipped Jasper’s top lip with her teeth. _Shit_ , that hurt, but Lapis did it again twice more and massaged the bitten spots with her lips between all three bites and Jasper found her own hisses of pain melting into something darker, more bittersweet, something that relented as Lapis lowered from her tiptoes onto her bare feet and guided Jasper against the wall. The coldness of the metal pressed through her thin t-shirt and made her shiver, to which Lapis just giggled softly.

“You dirty little slut,” Jasper told her, and lifted her head. The height difference was going to kill her neck if anything, and — in a stroke of genius, she reached down, put her hands underneath Lapis’s legs and butt and lifted her off the ground. “C’mere, you.”

She had gasped at first, but as Jasper leaned back and adjusted her hold, Lapis began to hum under her breath. Again she slipped her arms behind Jasper’s neck, threading through her mane of hair; her lithe body and slender legs pressed warmly into Jasper’s torso. A kiss happened again and slipped out of control. Lapis’s beautiful bare neck let Jasper in and she pressed kisses down that cold tattooed skin, savoring the small noises that slipped from her partner’s mouth. She felt Lapis’s hands leave her hair and half expected them to float somewhere else — Lapis had such curious hands — but she had braced on the wall behind them and seemed to be looking for something. Maybe a lightswitch; Jasper didn’t think much of it...if they were gonna take this further it might need to be a little darker anyway...

And Jasper would admit it — the one thing that could get her guard down for anything was when a second something was just in her grasp. She was one-track minded in the sense that her mind could only go on one track at a time, so when it was on Track 1, Track 2 was virtually defenseless. When there was a pretty girl in her arms, there was no thought at all about what the pretty girl’s arms might be doing at the time, what buttons she might be pressing, and why she had pulled away from a perfectly good kiss and climbed down to the ground just to thread their fingers together.

“Jasper,” Lapis whispered. “Don’t move.”

_**— SLAM.** _

Even if Jasper had recognized what Lapis’s words had meant, she still wouldn’t have been able to protest it — out of nowhere, a thick metal band yanked her wrist back against the wall and pricked her skin with an unseen needle. “What?!” was the only thing to leave Jasper’s mouth, so stupid, so simple. Things were beginning to fall into place now. Why this place was so cold. Why Lapis hadn’t turned any other lights on. What all those shadowy shapes were. This wasn’t a hiding place, this was a prison, a graveyard — and Lapis was still holding her one free hand when the second band snapped.

Under the pressure of the single cuff, their wrists ground together and Lapis cried out in pain. But she never once faltered in her step as she drew herself closer again to Jasper, back straight and dark eyes set. A soft but maniacal light burned in them.

“I’m done being used,” Lapis snarled. “I’m done with you and I'm done with the whole damn Alliance! And nobody...”

Of the two of them, Lapis had the only free hand. It reached to the side, up to a panel on the wall, and carefully dialed the buttons. A scream bubbled in Jasper’s throat and tried to rip free but the deed had been done — a sheet of metal and glass slid down from above their heads and tumbled to the ground, encasing them in a narrow airless tube. The cold hit her like a punch to the gut and already she watched the glass window to the outside world frost over — slowly, inevitably. The one warmth here in the cryogenic pod was the small body pressing itself against hers, forcing her head down painfully even as their worlds slowed down to black.

“Nobody,” Lapis Lazuli whispered slowly, “can hurt me anymore except myself.”

She pressed their lips together for a last time, but Jasper was already too frozen to resist. The thing that had pricked her wrist spread through her body like molten lead in her veins, leaving her to be less than a statue. A doll. A thing, no longer her own, but in the hands of a woman who hated her.

She surrendered to the darkness.


End file.
